coming. It'd be a sign o' weakness on the new chief's part ta let us go, an' that ain't gonna happen."
"So what's holding them up?" Banjee insisted, Rawl's words crawling over his skin like the first wind of Winter.
"I don't like what I suspect," Rawl admitted, with less bravado than Banjee had yet to see from the man. "We can take on one tribe, but not..." Rawl shook his head and wouldn't continue.
Frowning, Banjee returned in the growing dusk to the front where Malila passed out the tiny portions of dried rations that were their main meal of the day. As Banjee listened to a report concerning another ailing packdeer, Angel took that moment to flutter downward. The bird was strangely agitated, and bobbed his head and chuckled, silencing the speaking handler with his odd behavior.
With so much else pressing on him, Banjee found it hard to focus. As the handler waited patiently, he finally quieted his thoughts enough to let the bird's images enter his mind. What he saw brought terror. Angel saw not a tribe of Traders, but a sea of riders approaching. They had little time.
"Quick! We leave immediately! Get the strongest deer hitched! We've got riders coming after us - maybe an hour behind." The faces of those around him stared as people leaped to their feet. Taking a breath, Banjee made himself add the worst of the news. "Friends," he said in a straight forward voice, "this time there are hundreds. We'll fight hard as we can. Just remember you're fighting to get the coralin home. Now quick. Get moving."
Rawl cursed when the information percolated back to the end of the line. His deepest nightmares had come true; the new chief had asked other tribes to join in the pursuit. For a second Rawl contemplated walking off from the bumbling carts, but he quickly shut down the thought. The Nomers would surely track him in the featureless grasslands, and the prospect of what they would do was not appealing. Considering his choices as the train fell in, he clutched his bow and made his way forward to find the armsors. Might as well offer his services and place himself where he would be most protected.
He didn't have far to go to find them. Almost stumbling over the six in the growing dark, he found them settling into a circle on the ground to the side of the passing train.
"What the demon are you doin'?" he demanded, halting in shock. Then he caught himself. They were going to meditate. Meditate! So Aldaran! Meditating when action was called for!
Patchy's upper arm wore a white binding, but she otherwise held herself well. Her face in the gloom was unreadable, but her voice was composed and level. "We meditate, Rawl. Please excuse us."
"Are you crazy?" he couldn't help saying. "Now's not the time for that!"
"Now is always the time for that," she replied matter of factly. "Especially now."
Rawl continued to stand there, confronting the circle, ready to yell at them again but considering the futility of it.
"We contact the Ohmall, Rawl, where we find our wisdom. When we're done, we'll easily catch up to the wagons. If you don't care to join us, please leave."
Meditation had never been something Rawl had been able to do well; certainly it was nothing he'd carried over into his sojourn in the southern duchies. But now it seemed right. Clamping his narrow lips together, he sank to a seat outside the circle. If ever he'd needed the Ohmall's help, it had to be right now.
Slapping the reins, trying to see through the dusk, Banjee felt the urgent moments slip away. As the sun disappeared, he saw that the dry ground rose slightly to the northwest, and he guided the deer that way, desperate to find a place where they could get behind the wagons on some higher ground. Outrunning the Traders wasn't even a thought.
The withered grass rolled into a broad, stony knoll that dropped a few yards on its far side into one of the bushy depressions that dotted the landscape. "Pull the wagons into a circle and get the deer inside," he screamed, leaping from the seat to grab the lead deer's halter. The thorns of the bushes in the depression would help protect them from that direction, and if they turned over the wagons they might be safe enough to pick off enough Traders to discourage the rest. It seemed a good idea, anyway, until the surging mass of wailing pursuers covered the starry grasslands like a sea of locusts.
A whisper of sound began and then escalated into the ululating screams carried on the drum of hoof beats so memorable from the prior attacks. Banjee's insides congealed when he finally saw the hundreds of horsemen racing toward them in the blackness. "Steady, steady!" he called out ineffectively to brace those nearest. He had sent Angel far away, safer in the blind darkness than in the midst of battle.
Patchy rose and shifted to the wagon facing the center of the approaching horde. She stood, solid and tall, looking outward over the tilted wagon bed. "Armsors, ready!" she called with no hint of strain in her voice. Six others rose, Rawl among them, and then anyone in the party who held a bow. They faced the attackers bravely, a tiny den of fanged and clawed wildcats against a ravening lake of cronkin.
Quickly the screaming horsemen completely encircled the barricaded Aldarans, hovering and dancing just outside the range of the Aldaran archers. Twice the archers drove off wedges that dove forward, intending to break through the defense, and soon Patchy had conscripted the arrows of those, who in fear and panic, could not nurse their ammunition.
Still the horsemen pressed at them, first from one direction and then the other. At least a dozen of the Traders were injured or down, but it was as though the injuries simply added to their fire. Another wedge pushed at them, and this time the arrows from the horsemen thudded into the protecting wagons.
Banjee was no longer leader; it had fallen to Patchy, who directed her fellow armsors and the other archers with deep, calm grit. She yelled for people to move to the far side of the circle, and Banjee ran, stumbling over the rocks, for where the horsemen pushed again. As he ran, the packdeer swirled at the center of the circle, bleating and stepping on the reins they trailed. Another bevy of arrows hit the wagons in front of Banjee as he dove for cover, one flying over the top to nail the flank of a limping doe. The deer bellowed in pain, staggering and tripping. The panic transferred to the others. Several belted away from the injured deer, shoving their way between the wagons where they were met by the wall of thorns in the depression.
Banjee's focus was on his shooting then, and he loosed his arrow from the crack between the wagon beds. An arrow whined over his head, but the dark figure fifty feet in front of him twisted sideways, tumbling from his seat and forcing his mount from its stride. "This is insane," Banjee thought to himself, his mind pulled tight inside his head where it observed the surrounding horror with almost curious disbelief. The Traders seemed almost oblivious to their danger. Obviously the Aldarans had never really understood them; how could any dishonor Rawl may have committed ever warrant this mayhem and death?
More arrows penetrated their defense, and someone screamed close by. It might have been Malila, but Banjee couldn't go to her, pressed as he was trying to make each arrow count. Another scream rose from within the circle. The hair-raising wails grew louder, almost drowning Patchy's bellows. She was having her armsors draw their swords. Banjee pulled his, laying it next to him before swinging his bow back into the air. He had two arrows left.
The horde suddenly pressed forward toward his side of the circle. Screaming, waving their curved blades overhead, lines of robed figures slammed from the blackness, and Banjee's shot was a feeble pebble toss into the faces that for an instant took on shape. Unable to stop himself, he instinctively shifted backward in a crouch, though there was nowhere to go. At the same instant, an arrow slammed his right thigh, burrowing through his cotton leggings and flesh.
Banjee's leg buckled and he pitched forward on the ground against the wagon bed. As the horse of the first rider sailed over the wagon, Banjee's hand dropped the bow and snatched up his sword. Dragging his leg and twisting to confront the Trader, Banjee felt the wood of the wagon shake as something crashed into the other side. Suddenly the entire w
agon toppled toward him as the rear wheel snapped. The heavy bed descended and slammed his head into the dirt, cutting off his thinking so he couldn't hear the screams and guttural cries and the clangs of crossing swords.
When he did wake hours later, it was to the screeching pain in his leg and his head and his lower left arm where it was pinned by a rock under the heavy wagon. Another rock and the remaining front wheel had kept the full weight of the wagon off him. What he heard was a silence around him underlain by massive celebratory bellows from below the knoll. Perhaps the victors were waiting for morning to begin going through their spoils.
All gone, Banjee thought in stunned despair. No more Malila, or Donela, or Rory,… or Rawl. Briefly in heartbreak he wondered at the fate of each, and then he suddenly realized that he did not want to be found alive. He could still move, he found, and gasping from the effort, he pried the stone from under his broken arm and snapped the fletching from the arrow in his leg. When Banjee pulled himself past the opening under the wagon, he could see little in the blackness, but the noise still seemed to be coming from the far side of the silenced circle of wagons. Clamping his teeth against the molten fire in his leg, Banjee pulled himself over